showing off my walkman / portable collection

[ke4mcl]

i relocated my collection of early cassette portables to its new home in the toolbox along with my tapes. its amazing how quickly these can pile up!

my favorites are the 1st generation units. these generally have a few traits that separate them from later production units
1) dual headphone jacks
2) a "hotline" button that activates a mic so you can hear your surroundings
3) a radio tuner module that's disguised as a drop in cassette
4) the use of 4 AA batts.

i still haven't found a sony TPSL2 but hope to find one some day. i'm quite happy though with my akai's and their rebranded brethren from infinity and KLH.

a slide show of the collection can be seen here...
http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...view=slideshow

[Dumpster Diver]

Good stuff!

I don't have anything that fancy, but I got Quantity where I lack quality!

My "tool-box" turned into a large footlocker many years ago!!!

[retrokeeper]

Holy Crap!!! What a collection...I'm Very Envious!! Rob

[Dumpster Diver]

It's been years since I used a walkman, I'll take a looksee in my footlocker and snap a photo for ya! I must have about 25, I had to stop picking them up. One or two maybe worthy of your collection but the rest are nothing noteworthy as your collection!

It may take me a while to figure out the ins and outs of this Forum.

I'm not PC, not at all...

You're talking to a dude with a typewriter on his desk (YES I use it!)

-Jules

[Warped Bezel]

Originally Posted by Dumpster Diver

It's been years since I used a walkman, I'll take a looksee in my footlocker and snap a photo for ya! I must have about 25, I had to stop picking them up. One or two maybe worthy of your collection but the rest are nothing noteworthy as your collection!

It may take me a while to figure out the ins and outs of this Forum.

I'm not PC, not at all...

You're talking to a dude with a typewriter on his desk (YES I use it!)

-Jules

I have a Packard Bell 5DA "Stationized", among others.

[Dumpster Diver]

I got a Classic 1930's underwood.

you know where to get a type ribbon Re-inked by any chance?

I'm fresh out at the moment.

I'm itching for it.

as for the walkmen, LOL...Plural!!! I have to really get a WIDE angle LENS for my camera to get them in one shot!!! we shall see.

BTW, I find that I barely de-magnetize and clean my heads in my portables...

this is defiently a bad bad habit, however I usually reserve my "store-bought" tapes for my elite decks and keep my mix tapes in the portables exclusively.

how much should I care to maintain mix tapes anyway, normal Bias tapes usually are on the way out after about 6 months worth of constant playback.

I also find it noteworthy to further add; why is it that CASSETTES usually are either, Played untill there is nothing left on them (because the music is SO damn awesome you just keep playing it out back to back) OR the contrary (the tape is too lame or weak for your listening pleasure and NEVER EVER gets put on!!!)

[darkstar078]

Originally Posted by Dumpster Diver

......OR the contrary (the tape is too lame or weak for your listening pleasure and NEVER EVER gets put on!!!)

You ever tried minidiscs? They say md last longer than cassettes normally but I'm not sure.

[Dumpster Diver]

yeah, but MINIDISCS was the LAST straw before I was FED up with the whole Digital swindle, I realized it was all a scam at that point..then ipods came out by the time I was even having a dilemma and switched back from a portable discman to a cassette walkman, and I have stuck with the magnetic tape as the most reliable source of data storage since.

my dad got me a minidisc, for my birthday one year and I felt really guilty somehow because he was really just trying to help me out, but it was a 400 dollar Minidisc player and I doubt I even got to use it for 7% of it's market value alone. I never got over it. I took good care of it, but it still was a flimsy little peice of work. The FIRST issue is simply the desighn of the stop-rew-play function was originally on a circular "+" style thumbstick type desighn and it pretty much was the epitome of HELL. trying to skip forwards would someitme skip the tracks backwards!!! needless to say this desighn was Short lived.

MP3's hell-no. NOOOO!!!!

even the compatability of the mini-disc from the "optical" line out became a thing of the past. it turned into nothing but "downloaded" music. and you could no longer record your own tapes or obscure music straight on to the little bugger.
that to me is the whole Crux of this Technology. and I have sworn off anything digital at that point. excepting Burnt cd's from just pure convieniance.

back to MINIDISC;

up-dated versions of the software required to transfer data onto a PC became obsolete for a guy like me who enjoyed transferring LP's onto a mini-disc for kicks.. I wound up losing the original program for my PC and basically found a newer Minidisc in a thrifstore and it had the software, but it wasn't even compatable with my original mini-disc, it wouldn't upload anything I recorded through the "bantam" line!!!

I sat "RATS OFF TO YA!" it's just a frail little pathetic poor poor thing.

and what is done is done, I think that thing was a cheap peice of PLastic.

I knew A guy who uses a LARGE size multitrack minidisc player for his DJ stuff and it's a little more usefull for directly tranferring data in that sense I suppose. but Tapes are tapes!!!

comparing that to Dub-plates mixes again in my humble opinion, 5 straight hours of music is a little much, I still prefer the lenght of an LP than some dudes' random playlist of everysingle album he's downloaded on his PC in one sitting!!! Records belong on tape! not CD. analog should be apples and Digital should be Oranges.

as for the itunes (thats right I said THE Itunes, you kids today with your hoola-hoops and your pac-man video games!)...let's not go there..I will have to be locked up for the rest of my days after the rampage I want to run on the apple corperation for being so damn grubby with their sillypants crooked and backwards ethics on how music should be bought and sold.

Tape cassettes and Video tape defy the laws of pirating and bootlegging.

that to me is the true spirit of Analog recording!!!

Magnetic tape is so sneaky and Rugged in the right hands.

forget it, I can't download music, I'd still prefer to buy it from the store for full retail value than to listen to low-fi Mp4's even. Trying to transfer those to burnable formats is to discover a whole new meaning and definition to the word "PAIN"

[Dumpster Diver]

Originally Posted by darkstar078

You ever tried minidiscs? They say md last longer than cassettes normally but I'm not sure.

I was meaning the actual " musical content" of the tape rather than the actual physical quality of said "tape".

[R.Daneel]

That's a very nice collection KE! I love the vintage Akai models.

[ke4mcl]

the akai's are my favorites. just dug up a third one of those white akai's!

too bad they never put the GX head in a portable.

[stereorob]

wow dude nice stash!